Blog 5

 

My candidate, Chris Christie, is currently in ninth place in the polls with three percent and is currently meets the cutoff to appear on the main stage for the next presidential debate. Just from looking at the polls Christie has a mountain to climb, but I am not sure if it is time to abandon the main idea of the campaign just because it is still very early in the race. Governor Christie had a solid debate in the last presidential debate, which helped to make him more relevant in the polls. Some of the candidates have tried to follow the “say what comes to your mind” Donald Trump tactic, but it has not worked out well for the others because they do not have the arrogant personality of Donald Trump. I feel Christie should definitely stay away from this tactic, but he should continue to be stern on stage like he was on the stage for the second presidential debate. In order for him to make a move in the polls he needs to capitalize of off his closing statement from the second debate. Governor Christie’s law enforcer theme is a good one to have in today’s society with the escalation in the crime in the United States and with the heighten level of threats by ISIS. I would encourage Governor Christie to develop plans on how to combat crime in America and a plan to fight ISIS so he can talk about that in the next debate. I would also encourage Governor Christie to have other plans on immigration and the economy prepared so he can use the platform of the debate to get the information out to the public.

 

The reason I think it is important to have a legitimate plan that will work to help back up his claims is because I believe this would be his best chance to get back in the race. For example, Donald Trump has been questioned a lot about how he would deport 11 millions immigrants in one year. He has not developed a credible plan to support the numbers he has been saying and this has hurt the credibility of his claim. He sounds great and easy when he first said it, but it his just empty words until he has a plan that works with the budget and can actually be achieved. Due to his lack of releasing or lack of creating a plan, his large lead in the polls has begun to shrink. 

 

Right now the polls that have been released could have a lot of errors because of how early it is in the race. According to the book, some of the possible problems that lead to unreliable poll numbers are sampling errors, question framing, ordering effects, and interviewer effects (Powell and Cowart, pg. 179). Yes the polls can help the candidate decided which direction to head in with their campaign, but we do not know the level of interest the people polled have had in the race or how many of the survey results conducted by volunteers of the various campaigns have been tainted.